GazerRise Fantastic!

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

alexanderdavies-99382 "Background to Danger" is a case of everyone involved just going through the motions. Nothing about this film is distinguished and it's a relief that it's only on for 80 minutes. George Raft should have chosen better films than this routine fare. The above film was his fifth and final one before he and "Warner Bros" parted company for good. Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre are both fine actors who gave solid support but even they can't save this nonsense. Brenda Marshall isn't much of an actress. She may have had a good screen presence but Bette Davis or Olivia De Havilland she isn't. The worn plot follows an American travelling salesman (Raft) who just happens to get involved with some espionage conspiracy and is recruited by the American embassy in a part of North Africa to discover what is going on. The script is very dull and holds no surprises whatever. At least there is some action but that can only compensate for so much of the film's drawbacks. A pity that George Raft left the studio on such a sour note.

blanche-2 Ankara Turkey is a "Background to Danger" in this 1943 spy film starring George Raft, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, and Brenda Marshall.Like others on this site, you'll be happy after seeing this that George Raft turned down all those films that made Humphrey Bogart an icon.Raft plays Joe Barton, who meets Ana Renzi (Osa Massen) on a train. She gives him money to hold for her - she will be searched upon leaving the train, but because he's an American, he won't be. The envelope she gives him is actually a series of plans sought by the Russians and the Germans, and both factions know Barton has them.Normally the presence of Lorre and Greenstreet was enough to lift a film out of mediocrity, but unfortunately here they don't have enough to do to really help. Lorre and Marshall play a Russian brother and sister after the documents, and Greenstreet is on the side of the Nazis. The Germans are trying to convince the Turks that Russia is about to invade them in order to destroy their neutrality and bring them over to the Nazis. These plans apparently outline a false attack about to take place.This is one of those films that you forget as soon as it's over. It's a lot of deadpan delivery by Raft as everyone chases him. It was nice to see Turhan Bey in a small role. Raft could be fine in a role that suited his tough look and monotone delivery - I liked Nocturne, for instance - but here he misses.Directed by the reliable Raoul Walsh, this could have been one of the films Jack Warner asked him to do as a favor. Apparently Warner was always bringing Walsh to his office and saying, you have to do film script for me. Walsh would ask, who's in it? Warner would say, "I don't know. Some bums."

sol **SPOILERS** Long, even for an 80 minute film, and boring espionage movie about the slimy Nazis trying to get neutral Turkey into the war on their side. This is to be done with bogus information being manufactured by the Nazis and their agents in Ankara Turkey. This false information is to trick the Turkish people into thinking that their to be invaded by the Soviet Union, one of the US allies in the war, at any moment.It just so happens that US secret agent Joe Barton, George Raft, accidentally gets on the case by bumping into Ana Remzi, Osa Massen, on the Aleppo to Istanbul Express. Ana claiming that she's being followed by this assassin Igor Rashenko (Daniel Oclco) who, for reasons known only to herself, is out to get her has Barton running interference for Ana. Telling Barton that she has a letter containing 3,000 lira, her life savings, that if discovered can get Ana arrested he agrees to sneak it out of Syria, at no cost, as a favor for her. Since In Barton case him being an American citizen he's not subjected to be searched by Tukish customs at the Syrian/Turkish border.As it turns out that things aren't exactly as what Anna told Barton with her later getting killed and turning out to be a Nazi Agent. Rashenko working with his fellow Soviet Agents the Zeleshoff's consisting of brother Nikolai and his sister Tamara, Peter Lorre & Benda Marshall, is trying to retrieve the letter that Ana gave Barton. That latter actually has the elaborately forged, by the Nazis, battle plans of the Red Army in it's impending attack on Turkey.The big man involved in this scam is non other then the legendary Fatman, of "Maltese Falcon" fame, himself Sidney Greenstreet! Greenstreet plays the highly sophisticated and well bread Nazi provocateur Colonel Robinson, an obvious British turncoat, who just happens to be Hitler's man in Ankara Turkey! The Colonel, as the Fatman is known in the film, is to have the maps of the secretly planned attack on Turkey by the Sovet Union published in the Turkish press. This will get the Turkish population so up in arms that their Government will be forced to become Nazi Germany's partner it its war against the Allies!Barton trying to prevent this from happening gets to work on the Nazis and their pro German Turkish allies by taking on, American gangster style, the entire Nazi squad of provocateurs headed by the sinister Mr. Mailler, Kurt Katch. Having no trouble at all in foiling the Nazi's plans Barton not only destroys the forged documents of the phony Soviet invasion of Turkey but ends up getting the girl-Tamara-as well by the time the movie ended.***SPOILER ALERT*** Still in having to make make the Nazis as bad and effective as they really were, to put some authenticity into the screenplay, some of those on our, the good guys, side had to be killed off to make the film look realistic. That dubious task, by the film writers, was assigned to both Nikolai Zeleshoff and Igor Rashenko.

theowinthrop It hurts to give any film with Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre less than "5" on a scale of "1" to "10", but BACKGROUND TO DANGER (despite their presence) is not a good World War II espionage piece. It may be the weakest movie ever made from an Eric Ambler novel. Between 1938 and 1945 Ambler wrote five spy or international crime novels that (with his contemporary, and master, Graham Greene) reshaped the whole genre. Ambler's books were CAUSE FOR ALARM, BACKGROUND TO DANGER, JOUNRNEY INTO FEAR, THE MASK OF DEMETRIOS, and EPITAPH FOR A SPY. The greatest of these was the last that he wrote - THE MASK OF DEMETRIOS (also called A COFFIN FOR DEMETRIOS) which Greenstreet, Lorre, and Zachary Scott turned into one of the best portraits of a totally amoral criminal in cinema. Orson Welles helped direct (and supported Joseph Cotton in) JOURNEY INTO FEAR. I'm not sure by I believe that EPITAPH FOR A SPY (set in France in 1938) and CAUSE FOR ALARM (dealing with economic rivalries between somewhat allied axis countries) were not made into films. Someone may correct me on that.CAUSE FOR ALARM introduced a Communist Russian agent and his sister to Ambler's readers. Tamara and Nicolai Zarashoff are (when not pursuing espionage for their government in Moscow) bickering all the time. Ambler liked to humanize his characters (such as his masterpiece, Arthur Abdul Simpson, in THE LIGHT OF DAY / "TOPKAPI"), so his villain Demetrios Talat turns out to be a determined social climber, using his talents for evil in THE MASK OF DEMETRIOS to assist a bank, the Eurasian Credit Trust, on which he ends up a director. The Zarashoffs and their unwitting ally in CAUSE FOR ALARM manage to cause a brief split in the interests of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in early 1939. One would have known this when reading BACKGROUND TO DANGER a few years later, when they reappeared.When talking about the film FIVE FINGERS I gave the background of Turkish neutrality in World War II. Ambler tackled this in the novels BACKGROUND TO DANGER and JOUNRNEY INTO FEAR, pointing out that Turkey's police and army were scrupulously looking out to protect that neutrality (Col. Haki, who helps tell the introductory part of the story of Demetrios in THE MASK OF DEMETRIOS - played by Kurt Katch there - reappears as Orson Welles, protecting American engineer Joseph Cotton in JOURNEY INTO FEAR: to make sure Cotton finishes his job in arming Turkish naval craft). In BACKGROUND TO DANGER, Ambler (correctly) shows that German agents were more likely to try to push Turkey into the Axis camp by underhanded means. The villain is the ambiguously named Col. Robinson (Greenstreet, of course) sent to contact those anti-British Turkish nationalists who would join the Germans. The problem is that the novel demonstrated Ambler's tricks with Robinson in a way the film didn't. Robinson is German, and speaks with a German accent (in fact one of the characters says that he could not possibly be English!). Greenstreet had one of the finest English speaking voices in film.The Zolashoffs are here again (in the novel bickering again) but here working with the American played by George Raft. But in the novel, Raft's American is very naive - and they are educating this new ally in the "background to danger" to Turkish neutrality very quickly. This is not the story as W. R. Burnett made it in his screenplay, making Raft's character an American agent (which he wasn't). I can only guess that he did this to make the no nonsense Raft more believable - who could imagine Raft as a chump? It doesn't work - the novel is constructed for the Raft character to gradually realize the dangers of the Nazis and their allies, and the fact that (dubious as it is to us) the Communist agents were a better bet for allies. Instead the story makes Raft's character become a typical World War II propaganda hero - he can handle these Nazis with a blindfold on!There are some nice moments (due to Sidney and Peter). Greenstreet in particular has two nice ones that come to mind: when he notes his favorite set up (a Strauss waltz on a gramophone and a dead body on the floor), and later when his plans have all collapsed, and he is informed he must return to Berlin (his quick look of horror at hearing what will be his death sentence is done very well). But such moments are few and far between. The rest of this film sinks those few moments one recalls with fondness.